TechPowerUp recently brought you news on AMDs fantastic overclocking achievement with their new processors. Now we can tell you how it was done: cherry-picking the chips and slapping on some water cooling isn’t quite enough. AMDs new processors can operate at much lower temperatures without displaying the “cold bug” - where it just gives up and goes home - and performance scales very well at super-low temperatures. The problem is that the cold affects lots of things such as timing, but more importantly, power circuits, which stop switching and just fry everything in sight - surely one to avoid. AMD senior manager of social media, Simon Solotko explains in detail how it was all done, using both liquid helium and liquid nitrogen to make the poor processor really cold. The new processor had these great qualities, according to Solotko:

It was able to take a lot of voltage, extremely low temperatures, extremely high frequencies," he said. "It was very durable under extreme overclocking. So that was awesome. So it worked well, it scaled well, it responded to cold well – all the right variables.

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This overclock is an impressive feat and it will be interesting to see if Intel can match it.

I doubt they can match it. With the similarities to SB I'm expecting another multi-wall. Maybe higher but certainly not 84. Not that it matters. Interest in these impractical clocks has gone down massively. Show me the best 24/7 performance. Something we can use is far more impressive.

So they set the record. When I am ready to switch to a liquid nitrogen and liquid helium-cooled computer, I will keep this in mind. Otherwise, this is just a meaningless number achieved for publicity purposes.

According to the article the processor lasted a few seconds at what is theorized to be around 10K (while OCed to 8.49Ghz). This shows lots of promise for (complicated) digital circuits, in 5-10 years they might reach or even surpass Tardigrade levels of toughness.

So they set the record. When I am ready to switch to a liquid nitrogen and liquid helium-cooled computer, I will keep this in mind. Otherwise, this is just a meaningless number achieved for publicity purposes.

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Generally the cpu's which have achieved world record oc's can achieve very high speeds on air and water.

I honestly don't care about how high the chip can clock. I'm only interested in it's performance. Come on AMD, bench a BD chip and release the results. That's what I care about. Celerons can be OC'ed to 8ghz, but that doesn't mean I want one.

So they set the record. When I am ready to switch to a liquid nitrogen and liquid helium-cooled computer, I will keep this in mind. Otherwise, this is just a meaningless number achieved for publicity purposes.

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You mean when you are ready to switch to a 1 core computer. World records don't have anything to do with the average user. But talking like you do is like saying, "so what they built a rocket car that broke the sound barriuer, it isn't impressive at all until I can haul my groceries in it."

It's very impressive, and the fact that you expect to haul your groceries (or do your everyday simply PC tasks) with a rocket is just insane.

It's not pointless, just everyone with an Intel chip keeps saying "because I can't do this when I buy one, it doesn't matter". It's a world record, you doubtfully want benches anyways as you most likely aren't interested in AMD chips anyways. How many world records do you look at and you think that you can go out and do every day, and if you can't you discount them? They are meant to be amazing feats, of extraordinary proportions, not average feats of blandness.

Other benches will come soon, I will look to those for real performance figures. This is just something thats cool, that record has stood for a while.

It's not pointless, just everyone with an Intel chip keeps saying "because I can't do this when I buy one, it doesn't matter". It's a world record, you doubtfully want benches anyways as you most likely aren't interested in AMD chips anyways. How many world records do you look at and you think that you can go out and do every day, and if you can't you discount them? They are meant to be amazing feats, of extraordinary proportions, not average feats of blandness.

Other benches will come soon, I will look to those for real performance figures. This is just something thats cool, that record has stood for a while.

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Wow a lot of assumptions you made there without knowing a damn thing, but sadly I knew what I said would make someone butt hurt. For the record I own both AMD and Intel chips, and if bulldozer is worth an upgrade I will likely buy it but a"world record" means nothing as I can't buy one and then overclock it. I am not "discounting" the "world record" I am saying meh, I want something I can relate to as to how it will preform should I buy one, and this attention grab is not it.

Wow a lot of assumptions you made there without knowing a damn thing, but sadly I knew what I said would make someone butt hurt. For the record I own both AMD and Intel chips, and if bulldozer is worth an upgrade I will likely buy it but a"world record" means nothing as I can't buy one and then overclock it. I am not "discounting" the "world record" I am saying meh, I want something I can relate to as to how it will preform should I buy one, and this attention grab is not it.

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I only made one assumption, and it was based on your own system specs (I list all of my systems in my specs usually, as do others)

And I agree completely on buying if the performance is right. All world records are "meh", they don't mean anything to any almost anyone on here, but usually if something means absolutely nothing to me, I just don't even post about it, as it doesn't matter. Just seems to be so many posts that are copy and paste of what you said, instead of a discussion of the actual way they hit the record, or how long the record has stood, just annoying.

I of course would like to see some real world figures as well. But I'll just have to wait for those.

Meaningless and nothing but FLUFF ! What really matters is performance if AMD can do some thing real in the performance area it would stand to reason they would put out some real BM numbers not all this BS and fluff . Time to put up or shut up AMD !

Yawn. Wake me up when Ivy Bridge arrives. You know, Intel MASS-PRODUCES an innovative 3-D chip technology which ACTUALLY makes a difference in power consumption, that's what I'm talking about. Not some uber-exotic overclock which no one in their right mind can setup and run 24/7.

Yawn. Wake me up when Ivy Bridge arrives. You know, Intel MASS-PRODUCES an innovative 3-D chip technology which ACTUALLY makes a difference in power consumption, that's what I'm talking about. Not some uber-exotic overclock which no one in their right mind can setup and run 24/7.

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LOL Yeah . Hell we have more information on the Ivy bridge than on this BD and BD is just days away from the retail market

LOL Yeah . Hell we have more information on the Ivy bridge than on this BD and BD is just days away from the retail market

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That doesn't have to be a bad thing. We'll see. But it certainly is possible this hush-hush is just delaying the inevitable beating AMD's stock would take if BD is less than impressive. But as you say, we don't have the info, so it could go either way.

Blah blah blah more hype. Please just give us some bloody real reviews of the product. I'm pretty sure ancient processors did reach 6-7 GHz, still they were slower than a modern 2 GHz processor. And on top of that they only OCed 2 cores to that speed, not all 8. Real world performance is what we want to know, not if it can go "over 9000" MHz.